Barbie Stern

Barbie Stern

Dinner With Our Friends, as an idea for a way to raise funds to feed kids came together, where else? ... sitting around my friends’, Michele and Bob’s, dinner table just talking about everything and nothing and then it hit me. This was it! We had all graduated from the Cornell Hotel School so that we could work with Hotels and Restaurants. It’s almost a given that what you serve in your restaurant is rarely what you serve at home and we all have family recipes and stories to tell long past the time that anyone wants to listen. So then I thought ... it shouldn't be that hard to get some friends together to build a project that could:

1. Connect great recipes and stories from our friends to their customers and guests who know them through their establishments 2. Have a serious impact on one of the greatest issues we face today.... childhood hungerSo, knowing that if this was going to work we'd need a lot of help from people who have so many different skills ... but it didn't feel as though it was out of reach. It felt like this was a virtual intersection where...

every job I've ever held...

every person I've ever met...

every skill I've ever learned …

all collided and generated a network of individuals who have, without hesitation, joined the team that is creating our first edition of Dinner With Our Friends ... and what we've found is that this project has taken on a life of its' own because in the end...

It's All About Feeding Kids!

​My great-grandmother started a business in 1893 where they sold anything that was useful where food was served. Needless to say that with the advent of the restaurant business the company grew and my father, the third generation to guide the business, would come home for dinner and talk about new businesses and restaurant opening teams and I knew that I wanted to be part of that world. I was hooked. When I was 14, I talked my parents into letting me work for the most beautiful restaurant I'd ever seen, Chester's Roadhouse, in my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. I began my auspicious career in the Hospitality arena by folding napkins, filling salt shakers and sugar bowls and never looked back.

A new world opened up for me when I enrolled in Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration. Over the next four years, I earned my degree and found an extraordinary network of friends who are the very bedrock of what's become my life's adventure. I learned to cook as an apprentice at the Maisonette in Cincinnati, OH and was most fortunate to study under the watchful eye of an exceptional Executive Chef, Georges Haidon. Importantly, the Maisonette was recognized as the restaurant with the longest held Mobil-Guide (now Forbes) 5-Star rating in the USA. After graduation I worked on the opening teams for both a hotel and restaurant company. Ultimately, I left the operational life for a 23 year career in sales and marketing management with Procter & Gamble. In 2001, a friend asked me to work as one of the founding members of the Freestore-Foodbank Cincinnati Cooks! Program, a Community Kitchen effort designed to prepare individuals with previous life issues for productive careers in foodservice. Importantly, Cincinnati Cooks! continues to provide dinner meals to hungry kids every weeknight through Kids Café locations in the Cincinnati area.

The Hospitality world is filled with people whose very DNA is all about service and taking the extra step to be sure everyone around them is well cared for. We talk about the philosophy demonstrated in these disciplines as a Life of Service to others. Take that thinking just a step further and no matter what, the Hospitality world and everyone in it, has always been able to feed people. Now, we need only look outside our doors to know that there are too many hungry kids in this world and collectively we say that's not ok.